Somewhere along the way, businesses discovered that making things complicated can be more profitable than making them better.
Consider how many products are sold through subscription tiers, complicated pricing structures, additional fees, and features that require separate purchases. Something that could have been offered as a straightforward product becomes a collection of options that customers have to spend time understanding.
Complexity isn’t always accidental.
When pricing is difficult to compare, customers struggle to determine which company actually offers the better deal. When cancellation requires several steps, some people simply give up. When a service has five subscription tiers, customers may choose a more expensive option just to avoid missing something they might eventually need.
In these situations, complexity works in the company’s favor.
This is particularly interesting because businesses constantly talk about improving the customer experience. They invest in user research, interface design, and customer satisfaction surveys, while sometimes maintaining systems that make purchasing, comparing, or leaving unnecessarily difficult.
Of course, not all complexity is manufactured. Some products genuinely require different configurations, and offering customers more options can create real value.
But there’s a difference between complexity that serves the customer and complexity that serves the business at the customer’s expense.
A company that benefits from customers misunderstanding its prices has little incentive to make those prices easier to understand.
Perhaps the most revealing question isn’t why businesses make things so complicated.
It’s whether they would still make them complicated if simplicity were more profitable.